Launching December 7, “The Idea
Writers” offers an in-depth look at the
state of copywriting and brand
creativity in today’s marketplace. With
insight on creative process and
campaign development from the
industry’s leading creatives, the book
provides solid advice for copywriters at
all levels. It also provides a detailed
examination of the changes that have
completely remade the advertising
industry, and is a useful guide for
anyone looking to understand brand
creativity today. “The Idea Writers” is
the first book from Creativity Editor
Teressa Iezzi.

IF WE’VE GOT THIS RIGHT, copywriters
today are storytellers, conversation
keepers, curators and inventors. They
are idea generators, executors and technology savants.

On any given day, depending on
where and for whom they work, these
new masters and mistresses of brand
creativity and engagement might be
writing a script for a web film, orchestrating a transmedia story or conceiving and helping to develop an app. They
might be inventing a way for an
automaker to contribute to the conversation on conservation by creating an
application to encourage efficient driving; they might be working with a
handful of top young artists to create a
giant Times Square billboard for a
retailer and then repurposing that billboard into limited edition handbags; or
they might be coming up with commands to give to a chicken. It’s a veritable creative wonderland out there.

But an explosion of creative opportunities doesn’t mean copywriters can
escape the scourge that has faced writers from the dawn of written expression: the blank page.

With each new project, today’s copywriter shoulders the same burden of
expectation that has bent every ad creative for the past 150 years and stares
into the same yawning void that no
three midday martinis could ever fill.

So you’re some kind of copywriter,
faced with some kind of assignment.
What do you do? Where do you start?

FIRST OF ALL, FORGET ABOUT MAKING AN AD

In the seminal copywriting book “HeyWhipple, Squeeze This,” first pub-lished in 1998, Luke Sullivan noted:“When you sit down to do an ad,you’re competing with every brandout there.”That was and remains partially truein the sense that you certainly aren’tjust competing with Brand A’s mainrival, Brand Z. You are competing withevery other brand vying for a share ofa consumer’s money and attention.

But today, as a copywriter or otherbrand-creativity maestro, you’re notjust making something that will com-pete with other brands and with othermessages created by brands. You’remaking something to compete withevery other piece of content, everyother media experience that a personhas during her waking hours. So youare charged with making somethingthat stands on its own as a worthwhilething for a person to engage with,brand or no brand. It’s just that, at thesame time, you also have to make thecontent or experience work for thecompany or brand involved.

“The Idea
Writers” is out
on Dec. 7. For
more
information on
the book and
where to find it,
go to
http://www.theidea
writers.com/

herring when you’re thinking about the challenges of
making something relevant
for a brand and a consumer.
The above numbers are
insufficient to describe the
shift in behavior that has
accompanied the rise of the
internet and the widespread
adoption of broadband.

This increase in brand
presence has coincided with
a decrease in available uninterrupted attention as the
internet ushered in the age
of multitasking. And yet
more significant, the explosion of branding has coincided with the age of the
empowered media consumer, the media consumer
who is also now a media
producer.

If you’re under 35, if
you’re watching TV at all,
Carr says: “We want to be interrupted, because each interruption brings
us a valuable piece of information. …
And so we ask the internet to keep
interrupting us, in ever more and different ways. We willingly accept the loss of
concentration and focus, the division of

“There is no point making advertising
that is better than other advertising;
that is not your competitor for people’s
time. You are up against all of the things
they want to watch and read, the
content they are seeking out.”

Teressa Iezzi is
the editor of Ad
Age’s Creativity,
and creator of
CAT, the
Creativity and
Technology
event. She is a
frequent
speaker on
creativity and
popular culture.

our attention and the fragmentation ofour thoughts, in return for the wealth ofcompelling or at least diverting infor-mation we receive. Tuning out is not anoption many of us would consider.”For every writer and theorist whoproclaims that the “internet is makingus dumb,” there are others who saydigital culture is, arguably, shaping bet-ter brains and encouraging what couldbe viewed as more positive societalbehavior. In the 2010 book “CognitiveSurplus: Creativity and Generosity in aConnected Age,” New York UniversityInteractive TelecommunicationsProgram professor and author ClayShirky notes the astounding figures onTV consumption: Americans consume200 billion hours of TV a year; some-one born in 1960 has already watched50,000 hours of TV. Shirky talks aboutthe vast potential the damned distract-ing internet has created—as peopleshift from being passive consumers ofmedia (from watching TV, and ads) tobeing creators and participants (con-tributing to Wikipedia, making andposting videos to YouTube, creatingFacebook groups and blogs).